Mid-Life Crises

Mid-Life Crises

The Sim days pass as they always do, and Felix ages up from young adult to a standard adult. Although his birthday goes by happily enough, we see by push notification that Felix is suffering a mid-life crisis!

All Sims who age up from young adult to standard adult have a chance of a mid-life crisis regardless. This chance is unaffected by everything else in that Sim's life: job skills, relationships, traits, success, absolutely none of it matters. A Sim either will or won't have the mid-life crisis, and there's no way to influence either way.

The presence of a mid-life crisis is indicated by a neutral moodlet, which also shows the length of the crisis. Here, you can see that Felix will suffer his crisis for a total of 12 days if we don't further intervene. We'll discuss that in a moment.

Like Teen Mood Swings, a mid-life crisis doesn't have an impact on the Sim's day-to-day activities or moods. The gain and loss rates of the mood meters remain unchanged, his traits (and therefore his AI-controlled personality) remain the same, and he'll continue to attend his job at the criminal warehouse.

Special Wishes

The major change with an adult's mid-life crisis lies in his wishes. Though many wishes will seem normal, Felix starts to develop some other strange wishes that we can accept into promises or deny. However, there is one major difference between an adult's mid-life crisis and a teen's mood swing: we are not allowed manually to cancel a promise. A pop-up box informs us of this for the first one.

Special wishes are given a reddish-purple background. Here, we see that Felix can take the expensive wish of buying a new car worth at least $10,000. Because of its simplicity, we accept it, and accept the pop-up box warning us that we can't cancel it. During the time a special wish has been turned into a promise, the "Mid-Life Crisis" moodlet will turn into a debuff, encouraging you to fulfill it as soon as possible.

One new car later, Felix earns himself a whole mess of lifetime happiness points. As with Teen Mood Swings, fulfilling any special wishes during a mid-life crisis gives a bonus to the number of rewarded points. When used properly, you'll be able to quickly afford many of the possible Lifetime Rewards.

Most of the special wishes are less expensive and less dramatic than buying a new car, such as planning a new outfit or changing hairstyles. Still, there are some incredibly dramatic ones, such as a Sim's desire to divorce their spouse or move across town. As always, it's your choice whether you want to promise it. Know that there is no penalty if you remove any wish (including special wishes) before turning it into a promise.

Ending the Crisis

If for some reason you want to end the mid-life crisis early, you can elect to give your Sim some therapy at the hospital. If the Sim in a mid-life crisis is the active Sim, simply click the hospital, and you can choose the special "Get Therapy" command. You'll have to shell out $2000, but it will end the mid-life crisis after about two in-game hours. Sims will never attempt to end their mid-life crises on their own.

Once the mid-life crisis is over, whether you got therapy or whether the time simply runs out, any remaining special wishes will auto-cancel and you'll never see them again. You might see a second mid-life crisis if you age backwards (such as drinking the Young Again potion) and then age up again, but otherwise you'll only have a single mid-life crisis at most.